Just confirmed that Grampians and Arapiles are closed tomorrow if it is a code red day along with every other park in the Wimmera with people being asked to at least leave these areas at least by morning and stay away for the day.

>>I reckon Bundaleer will be more comfy than my house.>>I wish there was a swimming hole near there.

Moora Moora res isn't too far and quite a nice spot to bush camp (you can't right next to it), you may of course have to walk out a couple of hundred metres to find water deeper than your waist, nice clear water, beautiful view of the serra range etc.

>Just confirmed that Grampians and Arapiles are closed tomorrow if it is>a code red day along with every other park in the Wimmera with people being>asked to at least leave these areas at least by morning and stay away for>the day.

I reckon they should close the whole of the Wimmera, and I can have a day off and go to the beach tomorrow.

This is just another normal summer run of hot days.

Last year we had 8 days in a row like this and the nanny did nothing, this year we have 2 and they panic for the 3rd.

On 10/01/2010 Fizz wrote:>>Just confirmed that Grampians and Arapiles are closed tomorrow if it is>>a code red day along with every other park in the Wimmera with people>being>>asked to at least leave these areas at least by morning and stay away>for>>the day.>>I reckon they should close the whole of the Wimmera, and I can have a>day off and go to the beach tomorrow.>>This is just another normal summer run of hot days.>>Last year we had 8 days in a row like this and the nanny did nothing,>this year we have 2 and they panic for the 3rd.

i kinda agree, but to be fair a little more panicing beforehand wouldn't have gone astray last year.

>This is just another normal summer run of hot days.>>Last year we had 8 days in a row like this and the nanny did nothing,>this year we have 2 and they panic for the 3rd.

This is new since the Black Saturday fires - if they had similar safety processes in place last year then many lives would have been saved. As a CFA volunteer and ex-SES volunteer we always kept in mind that you have to "plan for the worst and hope for the best". The people working on the post - Black Saturday bushfire warning systems are trying to keep people safe - it's not a conspiracy. In emergency conditions people panic and it is incredibly difficult to conduct organised evacuations when this happens. Especially if they are on foot in remote parts of the bush.

So it's best to help yourself and others when these situations arise - getting cynical and paranoid about a "nanny" state isn't helpful. How these "catastrophic" fire days go is being monitored of course and any feedback would be useful to those trying to protect the community.

I'm sure those involved in the Black Saturday fires last year feel that anything we can do to reduce the risk in these increasingly common extreme weather days is well worth the effort.

Really - "the nanny state" is made of normal people who care very much about what they do and they are only trying to avoid the sort of thing that happened last year - it was truly horrific.

I was too, and since my involvement I have only seen people try hard to learn from the past and improve things for next time. There's always elections coming up - and it is deeply cynical to think that they declare catastrohic fire warnings just because there is an election at the end of the year. I know the system isn't perfect, but the people i know who have been working so hard on this system are not working on it to improve the election outcomes of the government but to help save lives and property - just like CFA volunteers do.

IMHO the problem is that extremely hot and windy days are relatively common in places
like the Wimmera so labeling such days as 'catastrophic' and declaring that entire regions
should evacuate when no fires exist, is like crying wolf; the more its done the less people
are going to take notice and act.
However, another potential reason for this rating, as pointed out to me, is that if everyone
should be evacuating danger areas then it makes firebugs a little more obvious being in
areas that they shouldn't.

I think you will find that tomorrow is an abnormal hot summer day . Humidity levels , fuel load and wind are all important indicators. Last year about 10 days after black Saturday all trhe indicators were worse than the saturday and the priority warning was put out and the only areas that really evacuated were there were already fires burning in the Yarra valley , fortunately no large fires got going. Here it was 45 to 46 degrees with 30 to 40 km /h wind and if a fire had have started nothing would have stopped it . (only good thing was grass was almost all gone . Wimmera has had good crops , stubble everywhere and flames will be 10 to 15 times the height of the fuel , NOT the spot to be caught in a car . Yes the government is over reacting unless there is a fire, then they will be hung drawn and quartered for not warning people . My recollection of last year was severe fire danger predicted on friday before . These days with low irrigation our area is prone to district fire as not enough green pasture to stop such a fire . Be aware of the danger how prepared are you if you are caught in a car in a fire .

What I really want to know is if I should go to work today. Being on the edge of town, a fire could come rolling in across the farmlands and I'm leaving a defenseless cat in the house by himself.

Actually, aside from being slack and thinking about bonus days off work, what's the point of having all these warnings if I can't take the day of work to be prepared to defend my home and family (ie, the cat)? If I go to work, I'd be 25km away in a bogdy vehicle that overheats in this weather if anything happened.

For a change, I have bugger all on at work today to contemplate whether I am reasonably following the advise of the nanny state or being a slack bugger. However, there are other people who have things to do at work today that are rather crucial for the ongoing functioning of society. Is the choice to respond to warning limited to those who are not immediately needed in society? I think there's a whole substantial debate to be had here around the point of the warnings and the effects of everyone following them.

To describe contemporary western politics as a nanny state is not to subscribe to a conspiracy (god, they're mostly too stupid to conspire) but as a descriptive term of what is happening, where supposed altruism gets twisted into over-protective behaviour.

For example, there is a big poster in my local pool that says "Don't swim alone"

(not even, "we recomend that you don't")

I have no friends therefore if I never swam alone I'd never go swimming. I take responsibility for my own actions and there is very little pressure on people to do that now. Better to tell them what to do all the time.

If you want to live somwhere where there are lots of trees, then you should expect a fire at some point. Having some one say to you that the liklyhood of a fire tomorrow right where you live is so high as to be almost certain, is a reasonable thing to have happen.

If no one said anything, then the victims will say "They" should have told me.

I too am working on the fire planning front, and am also working on flooding as well.

The reactions to flood planning serve as an indicator to the reactions to fire planning.

No one knows when the next flood is going to happen; but they are common events throughout history, so it is likely that there will be more floods in the future. I tell someone that their land will flood in the event of a flood of a certain magnitude, and they say "Rubbish, I've lived here ten years and its never flooded". Its not being a nanny, its giving someone information that they may find usefull, and can then make up their own minds on how to respond.

If you live on top of a hill, your unlikely to get flooded, if you live in Carlton your unlikly to get burnt in a bush fire.

The Nanny response would be remove the risk of fire/flood and make everything cuddly soft.

>For example, there is a big poster in my local pool that says "Don't swim>alone">
I'd quite like the opportunity to swim alone in the horsham pool. Unfortunately, the 30 trillion other people using the facility get in the way of that.